I learned about making mezcal from my father, Miguel Gomez Santiago, his father, Pedro Gómez Rojas, and my mother’s father, Miguel Sánchez Bustamente. My family were farmers, planting pumpkins, beans, corn, and agave on their lands and selling the goods locally to make money to support our family. We have had a family palenque for four generations, located in the same place we are now.

I have been growing agave for 34 years - as far back as I can remember, I have always been in the fields looking after the agaves. I remember in 1990, I was working with my parents and grandparents, cultivating agave; my father told us that he had been planting agave in the same fields with my grandfather since 1955. The agaves that have always grown on these lands are Tóbala, Mexicano, Jabali and Arroqueño. In the 90s we started to introduce and grow Espadin.

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​When I was just 18, I decided to focus on planting agave from seed and increasing the amount of crops already growing on our lands. It was a little difficult to do this because buying the juvenile plants cost 4 to 5 pesos, so we were slow to increase our numbers. In 2006, we got the idea of going to the hills to collect a small amount of wild agave seeds, such as Tobala, Mexicano, Jabali and Arroqueño, to bring back to plant and grow ourselves from seed in nurseries. We tried many different practices, and over several years, we managed to germinate the seed 100%, which is a great success! From then we had agave in quantities that we no longer knew what to do with!

Over the years, with the experience acquired with my grandfather and my father, I have learned the processes to grow and care for the different varieties of maguey we now have on our lands. Today, all of my family is involved in the agaves and making mezcals. My parents are present at the different activities we do to advise us and share their experiences with us. My brother Jesús Cristian Gomes Sánchez, together with me, distils the mezcal. My brother Fernando Antonio Gomes Sánchez is in charge of making the agave pina’s for baking. My brother José Luis Gomes Sánchez is in charge of planting agaves and crops.

Now I am working exclusively with Melanie and Quiquiriqui, I see a great opportunity to make known to the world everything we do in this community and in this region in terms of the cultivation and production of mezcal, and I believe that now our mezcal will be tried by many people around the world. After they visited us, they gave us a lot of confidence in this new collaboration, and I think that confidence is very important and a great place to begin our journey together. 

It is important to continue the family legacy of growing agaves and making mezcal. I love to work with agave plants; I have cultivated this land all my life working here with my parents, year after year, aspiring to have more and more plants to produce mezcal.  We know and understand now that everyone likes to drink mezcal, so I am happy to see people enjoying my mezcal especially, and I thank my entire family from my great-grandparents, my grandparents, my parents and my brothers since all the learning I have about agave and mezcal and maguey is thanks to them.